Char-Grill. Snoopy’s. Pullen Park. Crabtree. These shared experiences make Raleigh home.
I was reminded again last week, while sharing beer and barbecue with the men of Christ Church, of how lucky my wife and I were to land in Raleigh.
I was invited to the gathering at the Milburnie Fishing Club by a friend who hails from Canada — he and his Oxford-educated wife have lived in many places, including London, but when they got to Raleigh, they decided to settle in the very best meaning of the word.
So, too, did the couple who just moved in down the street. They’re youngish (i.e. around my age) retirees from California who said they’d never spent much time here but decided to take the plunge because, at least on paper, Raleigh seemed to have everything.
Most of the men I spoke to around the Fishing Club’s fire pit sounded like they were from the South and so, of course, they couldn’t have been more welcoming.
Not that the people back where I came from in New York aren’t friendly. But a protective guardedness develops there, like bark on a tree, when almost everyone you encounter is a stranger — they don’t know you or yours, they know and do different things, and you’ll probably never see them again. I don’t honk my horn here because I assume I’ll bump into everybody again.
It’s why a college freshman from Raleigh attending school in the North told me people there aren’t as friendly. “When we went to parties at State or Carolina everybody talked to everybody else,” she said. “Here, they mostly talk to people they know.”
At the risk of offering analysis by anecdote, I believe she was suggesting a broader truth about a city that still feels like a small town, that offers a clear sense of place and belonging.
A few memories: I wasn’t sure about the trash pickup when we moved here in 1996 so I called the city. The woman on the other end couldn’t have been friendlier. When I called back a month later about recycling, she answered again and remembered me.
At the playground, there were other kids around, but always an open swing for my children — a far cry from New York, where scarce resources turn parenting into a Darwinian struggle.
As my kids grew up, I saw Raleigh give them something meaningful missing from my childhood: common, shared experiences. For them, their friends and many people they’ve never met, the Char-Grill and Snoopy’s, Pullen Park and Crabtree Mall, Indian Princess and Camp Cheerio are touchstones; our local version of Proust’s memory-evoking madeleines.
They signify what it means to grow up in Raleigh and not somewhere else.
A confession: I’m relieved I don’t have to cart my college-aged kids to the State Fair anymore. But I envy the many native adults I know who wouldn’t miss it because it provides them a deep sense of connection that goes far deeper than Krispy Kreme hamburgers.
Sure, I might be viewing our city through rose colored glasses. I know that all the things I point to as progress — the booming population, the new beer joints and restaurants — are stretching not just the idea of community but its physical reality.
As I fight for a parking space in Cameron Village, sit for two or three light cycles at Peace Street and expect to wait at least a half hour for my Bad Daddy’s fix, I know Raleigh is changing. I worry that soaring taxes will make it less attractive.
But as I enjoyed the real fellowship with perfect strangers who also felt like brothers at the Milburnie Fishing Club, I knew that Raleigh isn’t just where I live, it’s my home.
This story was originally published November 6, 2018 at 8:41 AM.